Today/Tonight we begin a journey, a five-week trip that will take us along a street now called Via Dolorosa, Latin for “Sorrowful Way.” It is also called by another Latin name, “Via Crucis” which translates to “Way of (the) Cross.”
Pastor Morehouse, Vicar Decker, and I will be your guides as we journey through the crowds that lined that street almost 2,000 years ago. We will discover the identity of some of those who were there. For more, click on the title above.
Author: kyriss
God’s steadfast love endures forever
Today’s readings serve, as you heard, to remind the Church of God’s eternally enduring love for people who are named with His Name. The texts from the Psalm, Jeremiah, the Letter to the Ephesians, and St. Luke have again been declared to us whom He gathers so regularly around His Word and Sacraments. Each year, on this particular Sunday, those readings reveal God’s unconditional love for sinners like you and me. They call us to remember that Jesus shed His blood into death to cover over sin, all sin. For more, click on the title above.
Bearing the cross, hearing Jesus, sitting in glory
The Lord has graciously brought us to another Wednesday in this Lenten season. As He does so, we are maintaining the “regular” orders of Services used here for Wednesdays. That means that each Lent Wednesday morning we continue to receive God’s gifts through the 20th century order called Divine Service, Setting 4. Each Lent Wednesday evening we continue to receive God’s gift of the Word through the ancient order of Vespers. …For more, click on the title above.
Rejoice in God
One of the key teachings of the Confessional Lutheran Church is that mankind is justified—declared right with God—by faith, not by the works carried out with human hands. This has been the case since Luther nailed the Ninety-Five Thesis to the door of his church. While there are multiple readings from Holy Scripture that explain the truth of how mankind is justified, our epistle reading for today clearly states that “we have been justified by faith.” For more, click on the title above.
Called to cling to the truth Who is God’s mercy
We are all beggars living under God’s Grace
Our homily for this Ash Wednesday is based upon a Psalm that is familiar to us
who have been receiving God’s gifts through the ancient public services (liturgies) of
the Church. It reveals that we are all beggars living under God’s grace. We pray the
Holy Spirit will guide our thoughts today as we contemplate the following translated
verse:
Mercy me, O Elohim, as to Your steadfast love, as to Your abundant mercy
blot out my transgressions; cause to thoroughly wash me from my iniquity, and
from my sin cleanse me….For more, click on the title above.
Blind and begging
God has brought us to the last Sunday of Pre-Lent. In just a few days the greens we see before us will be replaced. Crosses will be veiled. There will be a lot to see and hear as the seasons change.
Of the five senses that we use to absorb information about the world around us and in the Church, sight, smell, touch, taste, and hearing, we tend to rely on two of them more than the others. Sight and hearing are the two key senses we use more than anything else. Now, this is not to say that the other three senses are unnecessary or useless. We use all of our senses on a daily basis. …For more, click on the title above.
The Sower and the seed
Our text for this morning from the Gospel of St. Luke is commonly called the Parable of the Sower. This is actually a parable about four different kinds of dirt, or soil. The emphasis is not on the sower at all—although we will have a thing or two to say about him—but the focus is on the different kinds of soil into which the sower’s seed falls. To put it another way, this is not a parable about the preacher, it’s about the hearers….For more, click on the title above.
God’s Word: Our shield
At every ordination and installation of a pastor within the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod you will hear the following: “Do you believe and confess the canonical books of the Old and New Testaments to be the inspired Word of God and the only infallible rule of faith and practice?” And you will hear them answer in the affirmative….For more, click on the title above.
